


Out Of Depth, Out Of Breath

by TiredPanAndNotAFan



Series: The Silver Sails [3]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (it's not realistic tho), Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Military Backstory, Not In The Present, Somewhat graphic descriptions of gore, Welcome Back To The Silver Sails Mess, mostly just remembered/alluded to, original mechsonas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiredPanAndNotAFan/pseuds/TiredPanAndNotAFan
Summary: First Officer Proznia Z. Jasnosc of the Brudzian Exploration Guild’s 148th Deep-Bound Fleet finds herself on an unfamiliar vessel.
Series: The Silver Sails [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046695
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Out Of Depth, Out Of Breath

**Author's Note:**

> TWs: Description of blood, gore, and death (past), unrealistic military stuff, allusions to abusive relationships (between Leo and Doc C)
> 
> also important for yall to know that Proznia is 3'4". keep this in mind.

The last thing that Proznia remembered was fighting that dziowy from that unexplored sector of the Eastern Ravines, the one that had killed her captain. She remembered it tearing out her throat, ripping her gills to shreds, and she remembered losing blood, slowly floating up to the surface in a daze. She remembered excruciating pain as her insides popped, the rapid pressure decrease making things that she didn’t even know existed rupture. 

She was absolutely sure that she was dead. She could still feel the empty weightlessness, except increased; she also felt like she was in air, instead of water. 

Proznia preferred being in the water, close to the rocks and volcanic vents. She had always hated the air pockets that most or her people chose to dwell in. They made the salt from the water stick and dry uncomfortably, and she hated the way it made her bioluminescent glow bend into different, harsher colors.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. She was met with a bright room-- brighter and whiter than any she’d ever been in-- and she was laying on a cold, dry table. She was surprised to feel that there was no lingering salt on her skin, even if everything was dry (ew). 

There were… tubes? trailing over her, and all leading to… her throat.

She noticed that her neck felt heavier. In fact, she couldn’t really… feel it. At all. She tried to flex her gills. She felt movement in the way one would feel a numb limb. She reached up and ran her hands down her throat, and it most definitely was _not_ flesh she felt. It was metal.

On Brudza, metal was a rare material. It was only collected in small samples from the volcanic vents that released glowing chemicals into the water, as most of it was used for energy production. Metal was reserved for only the highest military stations. Why was so much of it used on a first officer of the _exploration division?_

Now that she looked around… everything was made of metal. What kind of place was this? Where did they get their resources? It was absolutely ridiculous. The metal even looked like it was moulded-- what an outrageous thought!-- to look like planks of a different material, one that she had never seen before.

She had one question: where in Neptune’s name was she? Proznia didn’t want to move too much, those small tube-things were still connected to her neck (some of them even went inside of her new mechanical gills, which felt downright gross once she was aware of it), which kept her on the table.

The room was empty. Once she got past the metal walls, she saw… pictures? Some of them moved, and most of them were just charts, graphs, and words in a language she didn’t understand. She noticed that one of them got new words whenever she took a breath, and another seemed to be measuring out her heartbeat, beeping in time with a moving green line. 

She tugged at the tubes, and most of them came out easily, although they sent small shocks to her system, as if she had just touched an electric eel. She wondered if everything ran off of electricity, here. Back on Brudza, the eels were kept in sealed habitats with enriched water and a steady food source, and the water’s conduction of the electricity of so many eels for such a small space helped power the processing plants. 

The picture with the moving line and the beeping became a flat line, and instead of beeping it made a jaring, drawn-out noise like an emergency alarm. She hopped off the table and tried to get it to stop, to no avail. 

  
  


After a few moments, the door that she hadn’t realized was a door opened, and a tall, ridiculously-dressed… person? They weren’t any of the tribal species from Brudza, they didn’t even have gills, did they live in this disgustingly dry environment? Rushed into the room, fiddling with the control panel underneath the moving pictures until the noise stopped. 

They turned around and smiled at her, looking nervous. He looked like a man, if a man could also be as harmless as a clump of seaweed, and she instantly decided that she wouldn’t get close to him if she could help it. She leveled a glare at him, flaring her frills and gills threateningly. It didn’t have the desired effect.

“Ah, hello there, mon amie! I am Léon, and this is my ship - well, no, I am not the captain, per se - Doctor Carmilla is on-planet at this time - I am an archivist, and a pilot, if need be, along with being, the, ah. Welcoming committee?” She could register he was speaking another language, but she understood him near-perfectly. She got the distinct impression that he had a strange accent. She was taken aback by someone having more than one designation, and no stated rank.

“Why are you an archivist _and_ a pilot? Don’t you have crew enough for each task? Are you understaffed? That’s improper, every vessel should have at least two workmen per job.”

“Well, it was just the Captain and I until this point - I do most of what is needed on board - but,” he said, shuffling, was he always this nervous? Why was he trying to be cheery? “You’ve been chosen by the, ah… _Good?_ Doctor, to join us?”

Proznia was even more confused by the second. A doctor that was the Captain, an archivist that was the pilot, a state-of-the-art vessel that somehow functioned with only two crewmen, with only one of them doing most of the work? It was outrageous. If she had tried to lead a mission like this, she would be stripped of her rank and sent back to school with the minnows.

“... What medical attention was I subjected to while I was under?”

More nervous tics from the strange man without gills-- she refused to call him by what seemed to be his first name-- as he seemed to flounder for what to say. 

“Well, she, ah… well, how do you say, your, um… your throat! She... replaced? Your throat. She has yet to explain the process to me, so I do not yet know the… specifics - but she did the same thing to my lungs about fifteen years ago.”

“What-- _A decade and a half?”_ He looked barely over twenty-five! “Atlanteans above, were you a minnow!?”

“Minnow? I don’t quite under-- OH! Oh, you mean - Non! Non! I suppose it is a bit, ah… Complicated? But we have plenty of time to discuss it later.” He smiled at her, and while he still looked nervous, he no longer seemed quite so… uncertain. What she was concerned about was that she was certain she had died and been brought back, and this man seemed far too kind to have experienced death before.

“I see. So--” She gestured to the metal table she had been on. “-- What are those tubes? I want a full report.”

She froze the moment she said it. Léon wasn’t her crewmate, and she wasn’t his superior. He didn’t seem to notice this.

“I suppose they are wires, but I would have to ask Doctor Carmilla for the specifics, it is her technology, after all… what would you say… _constitutes?..._ A full report?”

“ _Atlanteans…_ have you never once set foot on a military vessel? Also, what in Marianna are _wires?”_

“Le Petit Lapin is more of a _cargo_ ship, mon amie. Wires are, well, like tubes for electrical charges if I must define it simply. Do you have any more questions for me, amie de l’or?”

There he went, saying words that didn't make sense to whatever was translating for her. 

She obviously wasn’t going to call him by nicknames or his first name, as those were the only things she had been provided with, and that wouldn’t do.

“If we are going to be serv-- working together, I’d like to know your full title. In case you _don’t know what that means,"_ she said, scowling, “First Officer Proznia Z. Jasnosc of the Brudzian Exploration Guild’s 148th Deep-Bound Fleet, reporting to…” She gestured for Léon to respond, hoping to Leviathan he would get one thing right.

“Oh - I - Léon L’Étoile. Archivist of the star ship Le Petit Lapin off of Lune Dorée? It’s very nice to meet you, Proz-- _Proznia_?” He tried to salute, but it was with the wrong hand and with horrible posture, making Proznia grieve the fifteen years she spent in school learning proper discipline and decorum.

“... That was a pathetic salute. Where are my quarters?”

“Oh yes, yes! your room! Right this way!”

L’Étoile looked relieved to be going someplace instead of talking to her. Good. He may have been nearly twice as tall as she was, but she was still able to be intimidating. On another note, he said “room” as if he was referring to her quarters. Who calls their quarters their “room?” What sort of uncivilized trench-bound white-blooded place was _he_ from? 

They made their way through the vessel, traveling up a few decks and over, L’Étoile telling her where different important places were (“That’s the kitchen--” “Mess.” “--Oui, and there’s the medical ward, down that way is the brig, this is the rec room, there is the armory--” “It’s empty.” “The Doctor said that we needed one, she is acquiring weapons that cater to her, ah, tastes.”), before coming to a hallway that looked different from all the rest.

  
  


“This door leads to my room, mon amie, if you need anything, do feel free to knock… This one next to it is yours.”

L’Étoile opened the door by pressing a button on the wall next to it. Proznia walked in, still marveling at the fact that almost everything was made of metal. The cot-- oh, she supposed that was a proper bed, she hadn’t slept in one of those since… she couldn’t remember when. 

She dismissed him, closing the door, and marveled at her new quarters. There were the same walls as in - what had L’Étoile called it? The Laboratory? - as well as the halls, but in a darker shade of gray. It was cold like the ocean she loved, it was close like the cramped sleeping quarters she had shared with her crew, and it reminded her of the home she no longer had. She stubbornly held back her emotions on the matter.

She poked around, finding sets of clothes that were identical to her torn and bloodied uniform that for some reason she still wore, another one of those picture-things with a control panel attached, and a side-room with a mirror and a shower. 

This baffled Proznia, as only generals were given the privilege of a shower. They were fairly unnecessary and only existed to clean salt from skin, an effort that made one more put-together, but overall damaged the skin over time. She found them entirely too theatrical.

However, it seemed that this would be her only way to be in water for quite a while, so she took off the ruined clothes, turned on the water, and stepped under. 

The temperature controls were easy to figure out, so she turned them as cold as they would go (not cold enough) and sat down, losing herself to the feeling of finally not being so disgustingly dry.

For nostalgia’s sake, she tipped her head back and started singing a one-woman rendition of an old melancholy work song. It didn’t sound the same in the strange metal vessel, and she was surprised to hear her drawn-out notes turned haunting in the echo.

  
  


Across the ship, the loading bay opened, allowing in a small landing shuttle. Out of the shuttle came a small woman in a large wheelchair, who despite her appearance was more dangerous than her whole last failed attempt at a band and a family combined. As she made her way through the Petit Lapin, she heard Proznia’s song echoing through vents.

Doctor Carmilla smiled cruelly. Even if Léon wasn't good enough, she now had her own loyal little backup singer.


End file.
